


Lost and Found

by thatdamneddame



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic, Getting Together, Kid Fic, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 07:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4383353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamneddame/pseuds/thatdamneddame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The surprising thing isn't that Clint managed to find a baby when he was taking his dog for a walk--it's that Phil Coulson  is surprisingly good at babies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prettyasadiagram](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyasadiagram/gifts).



> Happy birthday to my love, my one and only prettyasadiagram. You like babies and failboats and I like underestimating how long a fic I'm writing is going to be, so, you know, enjoy!
> 
> Look, I started this fic pre AoU, so what started out trying to blend comics and MCU pretty much turned into straight Hawkguy fic with MCU!Phil with none of the badshit from movies or comics and no AoS because I don't watch it. This takes place in some sort of happy indeterminate time filled with babies and rainbows. I think that's what we all want anyways.
> 
> Thank you to metroelephant for the beta. You are a champ.

Clint is walking Lucky when he first hears the crying. He looks around, just to make sure that Lucky hasn't stolen some poor kid's ice cream cone (again) but the street is completely empty save for Lucky straining against his lead trying to get into a nearby dumpster, which no, not again, it took weeks to get that funk out of his fur last time. Lucky paws at the side of the dumpster and the crying picks up, so Clint figures his dog might be onto something.

Of course it's his fucking luck, knee deep in old Chinese food and rusty cans, that it's not a, like, a kitten or a raccoon or something.

"Aw baby," he says, instinctively picking the kid up and peeling lo mein off its little brown bear onesie. It stops crying long enough to peer up at him with curious hazel eyes before it starts wailing again in earnest.

Outside the dumpster, Lucky wuffs softly and Clint realizes he has to do something before Lucky decides to join then in the garbage party and the day gets a whole lot worse.

Clint has never claimed to make good decisions under pressure.

 

***

 

"Clint," Kate says in the exact same tone she had when she found out he'd been storing his surplus exploding arrows in the back of his freezer. "Why do you have a baby?"

Clint thinks that a better question would be 'Clint, you baby whisperer you, how did you manage to get such an angry squirmy thing to finally take a nap?' And the answer to that would be, of course, pure exhaustion and his ad hoc baby bjorn. Clint has watched a lot of daytime TV; he's sort of vaguely aware what you're supposed to do with babies.

"Uh, I found it?" he tries, carefully cradling the baby’s head because Kate has that look on her face that usually means she’s going to start yelling.

Kate sighs dramatically, instead. "You don't just _find_ babies, Hawkeye."

Clint thinks that they've known each other long enough by now that Kate should know, if someone was going to find a baby, of fucking course it would be him. "Katie," he tries, but she holds a hand up to stop him, looking aggrieved.

"You at least need to buy a really baby carrier."

Clint smiles. He knew he could always count on Kate.

 

***

 

Both Clint and Kate are Avengers, but neither one of them has ever been really great at, like, normal human interaction. Clint always suspected that Kate had the distinct advantage of not being raised by carnies, but he is fast realizing that having a ridiculous trust fund doesn’t really help. Kate unleashes her shiny black AmEx, buys one of everything at the nearest Babies R Us, and asks some terrified looking shop girl where they keep the organic baby formula and Clint realizes, like in many things, he is super wrong.

The shop girl looks frantically between Kate—ranting about GMOs—and Clint—clutching an olive skinned baby that sort of smells like old Chinese food—clearly trying to figure out what the fuck is happening here. Her expression is fast changing from confused to kind of skeeved out. Clint has nothing to help her; he knows this looks bad.

“Wouldn’t organic baby formula just be, like, breast milk?” Clint, who has never in his entire life been remotely responsible for a baby before, asks.

Both the sales girl and Kate give Clint filthy looks, and it probably says something terrible about Clint that he feels better like this, with two women clearly casting aspersions on his character. It just feels right.

“Never mind. Thank you. You’ve been very helpful,” Kate tells the girl before hustling Clint out of the store. “Oh my god, Clint, you can’t just say things like that. They’re going to call the cops on you for _clearly stealing that baby_.”

Safely in the crook of Clint’s arm, the baby gurgles, clearly comforted by the sounds of Kate explaining why she should be the only Hawkeye ever. He bounces the baby a little, trying to pretend that he is still listening with interest to Kate’s spiel, and thinks, _yeah, me too_.

 

***

 

"Okay, now what?" Kate asks when they finally get back to Clint’s place and lug all the ridiculous bags full of baby things Clint doesn’t even know the name of upstairs. He figures that the best part about having nine months to get ready for a baby is not having to lug all this shit up in one afternoon. He’s an Avenger, sure, but he’s not, like, Hulk strong.

Clint’s current plan is mostly to try and give the baby a bath so that Lucky will stop trying to lick at her. "What?" He asks, not really paying attention as he struggles to get the onesie off and not trip over his dog all at once. When he swing the baby out of Lucky's way, she giggles, so he does it again. She only laughs more.

"What now?" Kate repeats. "What are you going to do about the baby?"

"Uhhh," Clint answers.

"Oh my god," Kate sighs, pulling her phone out of her purse. "That's it, I'm calling Natasha."

 

***

 

Kate says she firmly refuses to take part in this madness anymore, like she wasn’t the one who bought the tiny bath towels and Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo Clint is using right now, and takes Lucky for a walk. “Until Natasha can menace some sense into you,” she said before she left.

But Clint’s not worried about Natasha or Kate right now. Right now he’s worried about accidentally getting shampoo into this little baby girl’s eyes. She keeps gurgling up at him so he doesn’t think he’s doing too badly at all.

 

***

 

Back in the day, there was this old gypsy lady named Old Emmaline who would tell people’s fortunes outside the big top before the show. She’d been with the circus for years, by the time Clint had finally joined their ranks, and that earned her things like respect and a permanent home, even though her arthritis meant she couldn’t help out like she used to.

Before Clint was Hawkeye—before Swordsman had noticed him and things got bad—Clint used to be put on Old Emmaline duty, which wasn’t so bad really. He’d wash her socks and pick up her trailer and she used to tell Clint that, “The trick to fortune telling is to look a person in their eyes and see what they want. Then look at their hands and see how they’ll get it.” She used to tell Clint that he’d have a hard life but be a good man, giving him one of her toothless smiles.

Clint remembers that her hands had been like worn leather. He’d thought she was wonderful. She’d died, peacefully, in her sleep like she’d deserved, before Clint could disappoint her.

 

***

 

Natasha comes over after bath time.

Clint has the baby cradled in a proper sling across his chest and he’s pacing his apartment because it's the only way he’s figured out to get her to settle. Natasha takes one look at him and firmly decides, "No. I am not prepared to deal with this." She looks at the piles of stuff Kate made Clint buy at the store, at Lucky keeping pace with Clint, at the little baby curled up asleep against Clint's chest, one arm protectively curled around her, holding her to him, and she seems to make a decision. "I'm going to call—"

"Please don't call Bobbi," Clint knee-jerk interrupts. Bobbi's usually next on the Clint Barton's Life Is A Hot Mess phone tree, but he can't stand to talk to her right now. Not about this. Not when kids was one of those pressing married-people issues that Clint had tried to ignore. Bobbi had wanted them. Clint hadn’t. He looks at the baby taking a nap, her hand curled against his chest, over his heart, and he can't think of anything worse than giving her away.

"Phil," Natasha finishes, looking inscrutable and mean. "I'm going to call Phil." She disappears before Clint can shove his foot further down his throat.

 

***

 

“You’re _friends_ with Phil Coulson?” Kate demands, poking Clint hard in the arm and not at all caring about the sleeping baby he’s holding.

“Uh, yes?” Clint tries, and it occurs to him that Kate and Phil have probably never actually met before. Well, maybe briefly as Agent Coulson and Hawkeye, but Clint’s still pretty sure all Kate’s heard about the guy are the ghost stories they like to tell around SHIELD. The ones about how Phil can kill a guy with a paperclip and that he only wears suits and is the only person that Nick Fury actually listens to. Clint likes Phil better knowing that Phil has a weakness for donuts and The Real Housewives. He thinks those things are important, that Phil doesn’t really seem like a person outside their context.

Kate continues to glare at Clint because she’s familiar with superheroes, knows that they can be sloppy and silly and terrible before their first cup of coffee, but people as competent as Phil usually don’t hang around people like Clint. But, then again, people like Natasha don’t normally hang around people like Clint either. He seems to have a talent for attracting super scary, super competent people to him.

“Hey, you don’t know everything about me, girly-girl,” Clint tells her, although she really kind of does.

 

***

 

Clint doesn't know what Natasha was expecting, but it turns out that Phil loves babies. As soon as Natasha lets Phil in, he pretty much makes a beeline for the baby Clint is still cradling against his chest.

“She’s beautiful,” Phil decides, running a gun calloused hand carefully over the peach fuzz she has for hair.

“She’s not staying,” Natasha says firmly, over Clint’s shoulder.

Clint opens his mouth to say something bratty, like, “That’s what you said about me,” but the impending pigtail pulling contest is put on hold by the baby waking up and starting to wail bloody murder.

Without missing a beat, Phil plucks her from Clint’s arms, pats her on the butt twice, and then marches over to the little changing station Kate had set up in the corner because, “I don’t trust you not to store diapers next to acid arrows.” Kate, for someone who despairs of most of Clint’s life choices, is the best kind of enabler.

Clint, Natasha, and Kate all watch at as Phil carefully lays the baby down, keeping one hand on her belly as he pulls out wipes and diaper. Clint had always thought watching Phil field strip a rifle was a thing of beauty, but it has nothing on this. Phil is quick and efficient, like he is in everything, but he’s smiling softly like this is the happiest he’s ever been.

“Phil Coulson knows how to change a diaper,” Kate says in an awed whisper.

“My sister has kids,” Phil explains, calmly grabbing for a wipe, before adding, “And my first wife had nephews.” Phil has never had a problem with peppering conversations with random facts about himself, despite the fact that pretty much everyone in spy school said that is exactly the kind of shit you wanted to avoid.

“ _Coulson_ ,” Natasha chides. Phil is the only person is the entire universe who gets to tell Nick Fury to fuck off, so he just sort of shrugs Natasha off and goes back to diapering. He blows a raspberry on the baby’s belly when he’s all done and she giggles and sort of waves her hands about. Clint feels the strong desire to swoon, but it’s Kate who says, “I need to sit down,” to no one in particular.

Natasha is either made of sterner stuff than the both of them or the Red Room fucked with her head more than anyone could have ever expected, because she does not look charmed at all. “Phil,” she says again, tapping her foot impatiently. “Might I remind you that that is _not_ Clint’s baby.”

Suddenly, all of Clint’s good cheer about Phil being great at babies is gone.

Phil perches the baby on one hip, cradling her head with his opposite hand. “No, Agent Romanoff,” Phil agrees, his posture no longer relaxed. “You don’t need to remind me,” he tells her, looking down at the baby in his arms. It’s been years since Clint looked at Phil and didn’t instantly know what he was thinking; he has no idea what Phil is thinking now.

Clint thinks he either looks wistful or sad. He didn’t realize until now how much he needs Phil to be okay with this, because Clint’s not sure he can do it otherwise.

 

***

 

Largely, Phil’s job at SHIELD consists of getting spies and field agents—inherently skittish people—to trust him while also managing the secrets of a multinational super-secret spy organization. Dealing with an accidental baby acquisition shouldn’t be that much more difficult, really. He sort of refuses to hand the baby back to Clint, though, and it’s much harder to have this conversation when Clint is starting to feel weirdly maternal about the whole affair.

“She’s clearly about three months old,” Phil is saying, bouncing the baby on his hip and smiling softly at her. “Any abandonment at this point would be deliberate. Especially given the circumstances of how you found her.” Phil frowns at that until the baby gurgles again and he smiles sort of helplessly in return. “Of course filing a police report would be the first step to any further legal action, especially if you want to get all the proper documentation sorted out.”

“Documentation for when she is adopted,” Natasha says pointedly.

Phil smiles blandly at her. “Why don’t you call the proper authorities, Natasha, so we can get this started.”

Natasha says something uncomplimentary in Russian, but she complies and goes into the other room to make the call.

From where she’s sitting, still looking like a fish out of water, Kate says, “Phil Coulson is good with babies,” like if she keeps saying it, it will eventually make sense.

Phil smiles at her, far more genuinely than how he smiled at Natasha. “Of course I’d like to thank you, Miss Bishop, for helping Barton here get the appropriate accessories to entertain our little guest for the time.” Kate looks a little torn between pride and being terrified that Phil Coulson knows who she is. “If you wouldn’t mind,” Phil goes on, “I think we’re all getting a bit hungry and who knows how long this will take. Would you mind running out and getting some take out? Whatever’s easiest.”

Kate sort of nods dumbly and leaves, still muttering, “Phil Coulson is good with babies,” under her breath.

“Well that’s taken care of,” Phil says, looking a lot more relaxed, looking a lot more like himself. Presumably because Natasha is safely out of range to intercept the baby and drop her off at the police station herself, Phil gently hands the baby back to Clint. Clint reaches out for her automatically.

Wordlessly, Phil settles himself on the couch next the Clint. Clint can’t take his eyes away from the little girl in his arms, but he can feel Phil next to him, the hot press of his thigh against Clint’s own, the line of his arm across Clint’s shoulder as he leans over to get a better look.

“So,” Phil says, and there is something warm in his voice, something Clint hasn’t heard in a while. “What did you name her?”

When Clint tears his eyes away from the baby, all he can see is Phil’s smile. It doesn’t feel dangerous or weird to admit what he’s known since she first peed all over him, long before Kate first showed up. “Emmy,” he admits, thinking of toothless smiles.

Phil reaches out to hold onto tiny fingers. “Emmy,” he repeats. “It’s a good name.”

 

***

 

Natasha is beyond furious when she realizes and that Phil isn’t going to coerce Clint into doing the probably sensible thing of putting the baby in anyone else’s capable hands.

The police come and go, saying things like, “We’ll let you know if anyone files a report,” and “We’ll have a social worker contact you in a few days,” and Phil answers all the questions the same way he does when he’s lying to the WSC on behalf of Fury—calmly, with confidence and no room to argue.

Clint doesn’t think this should be a surprise, really, his unwillingness to put Emmy in the hands of the state, not given his childhood. Not given his tendency to collect strays, Kate and Lucky included. He doesn’t know why Phil is allowing him this, but Clint trusts Phil implicitly—if Phil isn’t telling Clint to give Emmy away, then he’s not doing it. Not ever.

“Well, uh, I’m going to head out for the night,” Kate says carefully when it becomes apparent that Natasha is going to stage a sit-in in protest. She’s taken to viciously cleaning the kitchen counters and speaking only in Russian, which would be a lot more effective if Phil weren’t fluent and casually translating everything she says to Clint through sign language. Not that Clint really needs the help; he’s pretty fluent in unflattering Russian these days, and Natasha hasn’t said anything complementary in hours.

“Thanks for your help, Hawkeye,” Clint tells Kate, and in a rare burst of physical affection, pulls her into a one armed hug, Emmy safely held in the other.

Kate hugs him back and reaches out to touch Emmy despite herself. “Take care of yourself, Hawkeye,” she says. “And Little Hawkeye.”

Emmy smiles and coos, and Kate ducks out probably before she takes too much of a shine to her and attracts the attention of Natasha’s wrath.

Alone—as alone as they’re getting with Natasha still cleaning Clint’s kitchen with near murderous precision—Phil smiles softly and promises, “You’re doing the right thing, Clint.” He signs it, too, and Clint wonders if he knows he’s done it, gone from translating Natasha to himself.

“You think?” Clint asks and Phil just nods.

In the kitchen, Natasha swears violently, startling Lucky from his nap. It’s how Clint figures that Phil is probably right.

 

***

 

Emmy sleeps in Clint’s bed and Clint lays beside her and doesn’t sleep at all because he’s terrified he’ll crush her.

Phil had offered to put together the crib Kate had bought, but it was late and Clint was tired and mostly convinced that if he put Emmy down the fever dream of the day would be over. So Clint stays awake and watches his baby sleep and wonders what the fuck he was thinking, what the fuck he was doing, taking a baby home and then keeping her. He can barely take care of himself. Well, he takes care of Lucky all right.

It’s just that Clint can remember the group home, before Barney bust them out. Clint can remember his parents too. He knows that a baby will be placed quickly, that Emmy’s tiny hands and bright eyes would find her an easy home. But Clint is the one who found her. It’s up to him to keep her safe.

 

***

 

Around six am, the morning sun just starting to filter in through the blinds, Phil pokes his head into Clint’s room. He’s still wearing his trousers and shirtsleeves from yesterday, but he looks rumpled now, softer.

“Coffee?” he asks, clearly exhausted; Clint doesn’t think he slept at all either.

Clint nods and then when Phil slips back out of the room, he carefully, so carefully, gets out of bed. Emmy doesn’t stir once, still sound asleep. He kind of desperately needs to take a piss but he’s terrified of what will happen if he leaves her alone for just a second—she could roll out of bed or Lucky could jump on her, not knowing that she is delicate. He doesn’t want to call out for Phil in case he wakes her up and he hates the thought of picking her up in case she stirs, but like an angel from on high, Phil reappears with a baby monitor in hand.

“Here,” he says, setting it down on Clint’s bedside table and fiddling with the dials. “I have the other one out in the kitchen. You go take a shower and I’ll take care of her.”

Clint’s wanted to kiss Phil Coulson for years now, so long that he’s mostly forgotten about it, the desire just a constant base note in the back of his head. It’s the first time in a very long time that Clint has to remind himself all the reasons that would be A Bad Idea.

He takes a very cold shower.

 

***

 

Phil is scrambling eggs and ignoring Lucky, who is shamelessly begging because he’s Clint’s dog and so he has absolutely no manners. Emmy is still asleep in the middle of Clint’s bed, probably exhausted from yesterday. Clint knows he is.

“Natasha left after you went to bed," Phil says. Clint knows. He could hear them talking in his living room, probably a mix of Russian and English if their previous fights are anything to go by. Neither one of them is prone to yelling, but when Phil gets snippy with Natasha he likes to do it in her mother tongue. Clint doesn’t know if it’s because he wants there to be no misunderstandings between them or if it’s because when they fight, it’s usually about Clint. “She said she’d come around in a few days once things had settled down.”

“That’s all she had to say?”

“Well, no.” Phil laughs. “But she’ll get over it.”

Clint’s not so sure but over the baby monitor and through Clint’s thin walls, Emmy starts to cry and it doesn’t matter what Natasha thinks, because Clint is trying to calm a squealing baby and not scald himself on baby formula and Phil is holding Lucky back, laughing and not helping one bit.

Natasha will get over it or she won’t, but Clint’s pretty certain he chose right.

 

***

 

Kate comes by in the afternoon. Phil is using Clint’s bathroom to take a much needed shower, and Clint is trying to work out the tension in his shoulders by doing pushups, Emmy happily laying on the carpet next to him contemplating her new baby rattle.

She lets herself in and takes a seat on the couch. Lucky immediately jumps up after her and shoves his head in her lap.  “I don’t know what’s weirder,” Kate says, idly scratching Lucky’s ear, “that there’s a baby in your apartment or that you’re friends with Phil Coulson.”

“What’s wrong with having a baby in my apartment?” Clint asks, switching to one armed pushups because he knows it’ll annoy her. He doesn't want to talk about the Phil thing at all.

Kate rolls her eyes dramatically. “The only food you have in your kitchen is coffee and your TV setup is pretty much a bunch of wires three seconds away from starting an electrical fire.”

That is not entirely true. Clint has bacon and eggs and, courtesy of Kate, organic baby formula. She’s right about the wires though.

“She’s not crawling yet,” Clint tries, already trying to figure out if asking Tony to come over and tell him what to do or just throwing everything out would be less of a hassle.

“ _Yet_ ,” Kate counters and she would look a lot more intimidating if she weren’t covered in dog hair. “She is pretty cute, though,” Kate adds. Emmy has abandoned her rattle and is now either perfecting her seal impression or trying to do a pushup. The last time Clint felt such a rush of weird protective urgency, he was soaking wet in a veterinarian's office begging a nurse to save his dog.

Clint drops out of his pushup to just, like, stare for a little bit. “Yeah,” he agrees. “She is.”

 

***

 

Kate stays long enough to help feed Emmy and then duck out of diaper duty by offering to give Lucky a walk.

“I should go, too,” Phil says after Kate leaves. Clint tries not to examine too closely why that makes him sad. Phil must see something in his face, though, because he adds. “I need to change my clothes and you could probably do with groceries that aren’t just coffee and eggs.”

Clint tries not to smile like his crush just asked him to the eighth grade dance. “Don’t knock the coffee. I’m pretty sure we’ll need it.”

“We’ll probably need to eat a vegetable at some point,” Phil points out, droll, and it suddenly hits Clint like a freight train—he’d said _we_. He said it like this rash decision to take in a baby was something he and Phil signed up for together, when Phil wasn’t even the first person Clint called.

 _Phil said it too_ , Clint thinks hopefully before shutting down that line of thought. He trained himself years ago out of projecting his own crush onto Phil. Clint has an ex-wife and too many ex-girlfriends and pretty much the only reason that he hasn’t wound up dead in a ditch so far is sheer bullheadedness and dumb luck. He has a good friend in Phil and he’s not going to throw that away by complicating things. Phil is pretty much the only person who doesn’t look at Clint like he’s a perpetual fuckup.

“You say that now, but just you wait until the coffee runs out,” Clint says, using everything Natasha had ever taught him to sound like he’s just messing around. Like his heart isn’t jack rabbiting away in his chest, scared he just gave himself away. Scared he might have a reason to hope.

Phil smiles. “Well then, I guess I’ll just have to pick up more coffee too.”

Clint is completely fucked.

 

***

 

Phil’s still out when Kate drops Lucky off after his walk. Lucky pretty much makes a beeline for Emmy, like he wants to make sure she didn’t disappear while he was gone.

“Don’t hurt yourself, Hawkeye,” she warns Clint before she leaves. “Watch after him, Little Hawkeye,” she says to Emmy before pressing a kiss to her head. Clint figures everything will work itself out. It always does.

 

***

 

(Well, not always, but Clint keeps trying.)

 

***

 

When Phil returns, he brings groceries and he brings a duffle bag full of clothes that aren’t suits and he makes dinner and he sits on Clint’s ratty sofa holding Emmy, murmuring words to her that Clint can’t quite hear. Clint locks up all his stray feelings in a box because this could be dangerous—falling off a roof, fighting off aliens and the Russian mob, that could have nothing on this.

 

***

 

Clint’s couch becomes Phil’s bed in a strange, unspoken arrangement. Clint never asks Phil to stay and never tells him to leave and Phil keeps just keeps on showering in Clint’s shower and burning toast in the morning. He makes doctors appointments and helps Clint put together the crib and change table and weird bouncing contraption that Kate had bought in that first mad rush.

There is dog hair, now, on all of Phil’s suits when he heads to work in the mornings. It makes Clint weak at the knees and he usually tries to distract himself with Emmy so he can't think about it too much.

He doesn’t know how to thank Phil without bringing up how strange this is, the two of them, doing this. Clint has never been known to panic in stressful situations, but this is a little different than mad scientists and the end of the world.

 

***

 

It turns out Clint is good at the hands on things—changing diapers and the rare midnight feeding and bath time. He has a new workout routine that involves doing pushups and blowing raspberries on Emmy's tummy every time he pushes down. The first time she smiled and reached for him when he did this, Clint thought his face was going to fall off from smiling so much. So he does it again and again and again and it’s the best adrenaline rush Clint has ever found, inside the circus or out.

At night, Emmy sleeps in his bed, the crib only for naps. He knows he's not really supposed to, but there were a bunch of people in that one mommy forum who said it was okay and Phil hasn't told him not to yet, so he figures it’s alright. Besides, he loves it. She's small and warm and he hasn't had a bad dream—the kind all superheroes and spies get—since she found her way into Clint’s life.

Lucky used to sleep sprawled across the mattress, half on top of Clint, but now he carefully curls himself away at the foot of the bed without ever having to be told to be careful, that Emmy is delicate. Whenever she naps, he's never far away, curled up around the legs of her crib. Sometimes, though, when the urge to sprawl gets too much, he’ll migrate out into the living room and Clint will find him in the morning laying on top of Phil.

(“You can kick him off, you know,” Clint said once like he isn’t a complete fucking pushover when it comes to his dog and now his daughter.

“I don’t mind,” Phil said mildly and Clint never brings it up again.)

And Phil—it's not like they're co-parenting, okay. Phil just makes sure there Clint doesn't run out of diapers and formula and coffee. He makes sure Clint eats a vegetable once a week and he takes care of any SHIELD paperwork. Phil does what he pretty much always does, and that's look out for those details that Clint always loses track of and makes sure that Clint doesn’t embarrass the Avengers by dying alone in his apartment from scurvy. Which is exactly what Clint tells Natasha when she comes over to sit at his kitchen table and judge him.

“Just because you change more diapers than him doesn’t mean this—” Natasha uses her coffee cup to indicate Clint’s entire apartment “—isn’t upsettingly domestic.”

“It’s _Phil_ ,” Clint stresses. He wonders if Natasha lurked outside his apartment, waiting for Phil to leave for work before she came in specifically so Clint couldn’t avoid this conversation. It seems like the kind of thing she’d do. “Phil is always doing the right thing.”

“No, you’re thinking of Steve,” Natasha tells him. “Phil is not the living embodiment of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Clint would very much like to tell her that he thinks Phil actually is that, but last time they had this fight Phil had just flattened a building on a half a dozen people and Natasha seemed to think that proved her point. So instead Clint points out, “Kate’s been helping out, too.”

Natasha shudders. “Kate likes babies.”

Clint feels justified in laughing at her because Natasha has been cradling Emmy on her lap for the past hour now. Emmy keeps cooing up at her and Natasha keeps tickling her round little belly and Clint would love to have a camera because this is some Grade A blackmail material.

Natasha glares at Clint like she can hear what he’s thinking. “You tell Stark and you’re a dead man.”

“Wouldn’t dream about it,” Clint lies cheerfully and goes to make them more coffee.

 

***

 

“I just didn’t want you to get attached and then lose her,” Natasha admits later after they’ve laid Emmy down for her nap. Natasha seems about reluctant as Clint to do anything but watch her sleep. “You know how you are.”

Clint does but the doctors said she was healthy. The police said that there weren’t any leads, called Clint finding her a miracle. And, well, Clint’s life has been a series of close calls and reckless choices but he’s never really had a miracle before. He figures everyone gets one and he’s happy that his is this little baby girl.

“I know,” Clint says. “Thank you.”

Natasha knocks her elbow against Clint’s. “Just don’t fuck it up.”

 

***

 

Phil comes home from work to find Natasha and Clint sprawled out on the couch and for a moment it’s like nothing’s changed, like it’s back before aliens and Young Avengers became a daily part of their vocabulary, when they all used to zone out together after the rough missions. They end up drinking beer and eating too much pizza and making bets on _House Hunters_. Phil wins every time. He always does.

“It’s because I’ve actually been house hunting with a spouse before,” Phil says, revealing things he shouldn’t again.

Clint is in the kitchen, running a baby bottle under his tap before dutifully checking the temperature on the back of his hand. When he looks up he can see Phil and Natasha on the couch, can see the curve of Phil’s shoulder, the crooked line of his nose. He wants to say _hey, I own an apartment building_ , but the words catch at the back of his throat and he has to look away.

Phil must not notice. “Besides,” he adds, and Clint’s still not looking but he can hear the smile in Phil’s voice, “I’ve seen all these episodes before.”

Natasha laughs and Clint settles Emmy on his lap for her bottle. Maybe not just like old times, then.

 

***

 

It’s like living in a fugue state, really, finding a baby and then deciding to raise it yourself. Clint doesn’t really know what he was expecting, but, then again, he was pretty much only expecting to do a lap around the block and hope no one recognized him before Lucky could do his business.

Emmy sleeps through the night, mostly, and Clint has been on some serious missions in his time, but this is the most exhausted he’s ever been. He’s aware now, in a way he has never been before, of all the rough corners of his life. The way things could easily snag and go too far and it’s not just Clint who would get hurt if he just dismantled the carbon monoxide detector instead of just replacing the batteries, but Emmy too. He’s always tried to look out for other people, but usually other people aren’t this close to him. Usually, if he died or went away or got drunk on his sofa and passed out watching QVC, it wouldn’t change anything for anyone else.

Everything matters, now, in a way that it hadn’t before. Clint feels like all of his nerve endings are on fire. He cleans his apartment and baby proofs it with Phil’s careful supervision. He reads every book that Natasha and Kate leave around his apartment with none of the subtlety they’re capable of. Kate walks in when he’s highlighting a paragraph on teething (it might be happening soon, the books say, and Clint wants to be prepared) and pinches him because she’s not convinced he’s real. She’s a Hawkeye, so it hurts.

It doesn’t really occur to Clint that he hasn’t seen the inside of the quinjet in a while. He’s too busy being happy to miss it.

 

***

 

“Your recertifications are coming up,” Phil says one day. He’s still wearing his suit, which means he came straight from HQ. He has a pretty sizable chunk of his wardrobe hanging out in a suitcase in Clint’s living room, but he still sometimes heads back to his place for a change of clothes or to water his plants.

“Are you staying for dinner tonight?” Clint asks reflexively, because that’s what he does when Phil comes over in the evenings. What he means is _are you cooking for me tonight or am I going to eat an upsetting amount of tom yum goong again?_ but Phil hasn’t called him out on it yet so he figures they have an understanding. “Wait, recerts? Already?”

Phil nods sagely from where he is sitting on the floor in front of Emmy in her little bouncy chair. Lucky is licking her toes and it makes her giggle. Clint assumes Phil is supervising, but he pretty much stopped worrying about Lucky somehow hurting the baby after the first week. He's pretty sure that Lucky likes Emmy more than he likes Clint and Kate combined.

“Huh.” Clint still thinks it’s bullshit that he has to prove he can shoot a gun every couple of years, but mostly he can’t stop thinking, “We’ll have to find a sitter.”

Phil laughs and Emmy smiles up at him, like he hung the moon. “I guess we will.”

 

***

 

Phil says _we_ a lot. Clint tries not to think about it.

(It’s all Clint can think about at night, after Emmy’s tucked in and Phil’s puttering around in Clint’s living room, and Clint thinks _we we we_ loud enough to drown out Lucky’s snoring.)

 

***

 

Perhaps betraying her age, Kate pretty much demands to babysit Emmy when Clint complains about how dumb recerts are.

“Simone could do it, you know, if you have plans,” Clint tells her, more than a little terrified of Kate’s crazy eyes.

Kate holds Emmy tighter to her chest and glares at him. “No, I need to make sure that Little Hawkeye has good influences in her life.”

“So then Simone should definitely babysit,” Clint says, confident that the only thing that’ll prevent Kate from yelling at him is having an armful of baby.

If anything, Kate’s glare gets more murderous and Clint belatedly realizes that having a baby means that Kate and Natasha have been spending a lot more time together in his apartment. This can only end badly for him.

“Or you could,” he hastily backtracks. “You can definitely babysit.”

Kate doesn’t glare any less, but she does lessen her sleeper hold on his kid. He’ll take it.

 

***

 

Clint shoots a gun and performs CPR on a doll and lets the doctor poke and prod him to tell him everything he already knows—he’s a pretty good shot that might be able to save someone's life and he should probably invest in IcyHot stock because he is going to go through a lot of it.

“We good?” Clint asks Maria Hill once he's jumped through all of his normal hoops.

She scribbles something down on the clipboard she's holding—one of her terrible caricatures probably—and nods. "Congratulations Barton, you're cleared for active duty for another two years.” She puts the clipboard down and smiles at him then, and Clint remembers that she’s not just his terrifying boss, she’s one of Phil’s friends. “And congratulations on your daughter, too, I hear.”

Clint couldn’t stop himself from smiling even if he tried.

 

***

 

He goes to Phil’s office afterwards on autopilot. Phil is there, because of course he is, diligently typing away at his computer and Clint flops into one of Phil’s terrible office chairs. “I had, like, three people ask me if you were dying,” Clint tells him.

“Oh?” Phil asks, not even looking up.

“Well, they asked how you were doing and the last time people asked me that a building had literally collapsed on you,” Clint clarifies and Phil laughs.

“It was a wall,” Phil counters, but he actually stops typing and looks up at Clint. “Did you pass?”

“With flying colors.”

Phil nods and goes back to typing, which is fine because Clint is used to hanging out in Phil’s office while Phil does work. Clint loves Phil’s office; he thinks it’s hilarious. Most senior agents swap out the SHIELD issued furniture for something less soul crushing or, at the very least, hang up some pictures or something. Phil’s kept the furniture and he’s only hung two things on his walls—an antique propaganda poster of Cap and his license to kill, both framed.

“So I was thinking,” Clint says after a bit, when the steady tattoo of Phil’s typing has started to slow, “since we have a sitter and all—” Phil actually looks up, which Clint wasn’t expecting, and there’s a look on his face that Clint hasn’t seen before. “—that I could just nap on your terrible couch for, like, five hours. Or until Kate calls asking if I’ve died.”

Phil’s expression morphs into fond exasperation, which Clint is very familiar with because he is generally doing something that pretty much all of SHIELD and most of the Avengers tell him is not a great life choice. “Or you could sleep in a real bed.”

Before Clint can point out that there is a delightful but occasionally screamy baby at his house, which is why he needs to sleep for at least twelve hours, Phil fishes out his keys from his desk drawer and tosses them to Clint. Clint catches them without even thinking about it. “Uh,” he say eloquently.

“For my apartment,” Phil explains, that funny look back on his face and Clint wishes Kate or Natasha were here, because he’s sure they’d be able to tell him what it means. “I don’t need you throwing your back out on my couch.”

Clint looks at the keys in his hand and feels giddy, like the first time he ever hit a bullseye with his eyes closed. He forces himself not to think about why. “Thanks, Phil,” he says. “I will.”

 

***

 

Clint has been to Phil’s apartment a handful of times before, mostly when he was bleeding for whatever reason and needed some butterfly strips before he could limp home and bleed all over his own furniture. He's been there significantly less ever since Kate wandered into his life, but nothing in the apartment has really changed.

Phil, like everyone else Clint knows, is actually a successful adult who doesn't live in a rundown building illegally purchased from the Russian mob. It’s a two bedroom, which Clint doesn’t really understand because all of Phil’s friends are work friends and Clint seriously doubts he and Fury are having sleepovers. There was a while back, before Clint moved to Bed-Stuy, that he considered Phil’s guest room _his_ room, not that he’d ever admit it. Clint’s a dummy, no question, but he’s also a goddamn secret agent and Avenger to boot. He’s not an _idiot_.

He toes off his boots by the front door so Phil doesn’t murder him for tracking mud through his apartment before making his way to the guest room and collapsing onto the bed. He doesn’t really realize how exhausted he is until his head hits the pillows. The last thing he thinks before he passes out—on top of the covers, jeans and hoodie still on—is that the bedspread used to be blue. It’s purple now.

 

***

 

Clint wakes up to hot doggy breath and a seriously pissed off looking Kate staring down at him.

“Ugh,” he decides firmly, shoving his head under the nearest pillow. “What are you doing here?” By this he means, of course, _I hope you didn’t lose my baby_.

“Making sure you didn’t die in a ditch,” she tells him, yanking the pillow away. It’s the one with the screen printing of one of Steve’s old WWII propaganda posters on it and apparently Clint drooled all over it in his sleep. He’s not going to be able to look Steve in the eye for the next week. “Is there a reason Phil Coulson has been living on your couch?”

Clint makes a grab from the pillow but Kate jerks it away and he ends up falling onto the floor instead. “Because I have a baby?” Clint tries. He’s fairly confident he bruised his entire left side falling off the bed.

Kate rolls her eyes at him, which is probably fair. Lucky, apparently overwhelmed by having Clint so close to him, has decided to sit on Clint’s chest, his tail wagging in ecstatic doggy joy.

“You may be a Hawkeye,” Kate tells him firmly, “but you’re still a dummy.”

Lucky’s tail thumps gently against the side of Clint’s face. He thinks that Kate probably has a point.

 

***

 

When Clint finally drags himself out of Phil’s guestroom, it’s to find Phil, down to his socks and shirtsleeves, dancing around his living room with Emmy, singing along poorly to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Clint stops so suddenly, his heart in his throat, that Kate runs into him.

“Oh, Clint you dummy,” she says again, eyes on Phil. This time, though, she sounds sort of sad. “Pull your head out of your butt and do something about it.”

Phil must hear them because he looks over and smiles. Clint’s never really been lucky, so he’s not sure there’s anyway he gets to keep Emmy and gets to keep Phil but, goddamn, he can try.

 

***

 

They eat Chinese takeout on Phil’s floor before going back to Clint’s place.

“I’d let you all spend the night here,” Phil signs after he puts all their leftovers in the fridge, and Clint thinks Phil must know that Kate doesn’t know ASL, “but we didn’t bring all of Emmy’s stuff with us.”

Clint refuses to have butterflies in his stomach because he is a grown ass man and Kate is watching him like a goddamn hawk. “Thank you,” he both signs and says out loud.

Kate waits until Phil has his back turned to punch Clint in the arm. He figures he probably deserved that.

 

***

 

“Sorry guys, I’d love to stay and chat but America needs me,” Kate says pretty much as soon as they get to Clint’s place.

They watch Kate disappear out the door, tapping rapidly away at her phone. Clint waits until the door closes behind her to say, “You don’t have to stay.”

Phil just shrugs. “I don’t mind.” There is something like a smile on his face.

“Thanks, you know,” Clint tells him because he doesn’t think he’s actually said that yet. “I don’t think I could do it without you.” In his arms, Emmy gurgles happily and he knows she agrees with him. Without Phil, they’d both be lost.

“Sure you could,” Phil says and there’s nothing but faith shining from his blue eyes. Clint has spent years wanting to kiss Phil Coulson, but he thinks right now, if it weren’t for the baby in his arms, there wouldn’t be anything stopping him.

“I’m sure Natasha would disagree with you,” Clint counters, trying to reign it in before he fucks this up. He doesn’t want to fuck this up.

Phil just keeps on smiling and he keeps on standing too close to Clint and he keeps saying things like, “She just worries,” because Phil Coulson is the kind of person who looks at assassins and Avengers with fucked up pasts and treats them like they’re just normal people with normal neuroses.

All Clint has ever wanted was stability, was a place to call home and feel safe at night. He had it for a year or two when he was little, back when Old Emmaline used to sneak him cookies and teach him how to pick pockets before the Swordsman got involved. He has it now, whenever Phil smiles at him like this, like he trusts Clint with the world.

“Well, thanks for sticking around anyways,” Clint says because Phil needs to know that he’s wanted. Clint has always wanted Phil.

“Here, I’ll put her down.” Phil reaches for Emmy to get her ready for bed, but Clint doesn’t think this conversation is over yet.

 

***

 

“You don’t have to sleep on the couch, you know,” Clint says when Phil emerges from his room, gently closing the door behind him so their voices don’t wake Emmy. Phil raises his eyebrow and Clint rushes to clarify, “I mean, you have an apartment with a bed and everything. You don’t need to spend every night here.”

Clint can feel his heart jackrabbiting away in his chest because this, more than jumping out windows and fighting super powered supervillains with a stick and string from the Paleolithic era, this is dangerous. He doesn’t want Phil to leave but if he’s going to stay, he wants to make sure Phil’s sure.

Phil’s tie is gone now, the first couple of buttons on his shirt undone. Clint tries to swallow but his mouth has gone completely dry.

“Clint,” Phil says, and he’s standing so close now. “Why are you trying to push me away?” He’s standing just out of reach, calm and steady and kind, everything Clint has ever loved about him.

“I just don’t want you to feel obligated,” Clint admits and for the first time in years, since he was a little kid really, he feels shy.

“I’m not,” Phil tells him, shifts incrementally closer. “I want to be here. Do you want me here?”

Everything Clint has ever wanted in the world—safety, family, kindness, forgiveness—he has found in Phil Coulson. He will always want Phil, however he can have him. Clint’s never been good with words but even he knows that there are no words for this, not really.

“I never want you to leave,” Clint admits, and then so he doesn’t have to look at Phil’s face, he pulls him in for a kiss.

Clint expects for Phil to push him away, to kindly explain that he’s read this whole strange co-parenting thing wrong, but it never happens. Phil sighs into the kiss, bites at Clint’s bottom lip and runs his hands up Clint’s arms, across his shoulders.

“Then let me stay,” Phil whispers into Clint’s mouth, in between kisses, his voice almost a whine, and there’s nothing for Clint to do but to hold on, to press kisses against Phil’s jaw, down his neck, into the dip between his collar bones.

“Please,” Clint says, not really sure what he’s asking, but Phil, gently, guides Clint back up to him and kisses his answer into Clint’s mouth.

 

***

 

Natasha comes over in the morning.

“I saw Kate. She said you were sleeping on the couch,” she says to Phil, who is shirtless and feeding Emmy breakfast. It’s been a really good morning.

“No,” Clint tells her, feeling all kinds of well-fucked and well-loved and generous. “He’s sleeping in the bed.”

Natasha has known all of Clint’s secrets for years now and he wouldn’t be surprised if she knew Phil’s as well. “Good,” she says and takes a sip of her coffee.

Clint catches Phil’s eye and smiles, unable to help it. It is good. Really, really good. Clint’s looking forward to a lifetime of mornings, just like this.


End file.
